At Tying classes the question comes up asking how much will a beginner have to spend on materials before he/she feels they can handle most of the patterns they expect to tie. My answer is that they will never stop buying stuff and that you can do a lot of substituting, at first, if needed. But this does not answer the question. Maybe I should ask you folks about how much you spent before you reached a point where you only replace items or try newly offerred products. We provide a package of about $60 in material each for our classes but when I claim they should expect to dig for about $2000 if they include a hook assortment and a couple books they panic.